To Keep the Dark Away Gayle Martin

• 1 Widmung, S. 566 (After R. Schumann) 04:34
• 2 No. 1, To Keep the Dark Away 02:23
• 3 No. 2, A Glee Possesseth Me 01:59
• 4 No. 3, An Actual Suffering Strengthens 02:27
• 5 No. 4, The Auroral Light 02:32
• 6 No. 5, Whose Spokes a Dizzy Music Makes 02:16
• 7 No. 2, The Street Awakens 01:36
• 8 No. 3, Arrival of the Guests 02:57
• 9 No. 4, The Young Juliet 03:57
• 10 No. 6, The Montagues and the Capulets 04:11
• 11 No. 8, Mercutio 02:35
• 12 No. 1, Her Struggle 07:34
• 13 No. 2, Her Passion 07:13
• 14 No. 3, Her Martyrdom 05:16
• 15 Ballade of the Flying Dutchman, S. 441 (After R. Wagner) 05:56
• 16 Isoldes Liebestod, S. 447 (After R. Wagner) 07:12
• Total Runtime 01:04:38

Info for To Keep the Dark Away

Pianist Gayle Martin achieved international prominence as the sole American laureate of the sixth International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow. The Washington Post called her performance “a tour de force” and praised her artistry for its “intense passion and deep-seated emotional response to the music.” The Woodstock Times cited her recital as one “which, if recorded on 78’s, could have fooled the average pianophile into thinking he or she was listening to one of the greats of the past.” A native of Texas, Gayle was a student of Madame Rosina Lhévinne at The Juilliard School, where she was awarded the coveted Josef Lhévinne Prize.

Gayle’s vivid response to literature, sacred writings, ballet and opera inspired this Ravello release TO KEEP THE DARK AWAY, which pairs the emotional fervor, lyrical eloquence and narrative power of contemporary composer Judith Shatin with those same qualities in composers of the Romantic and early modern eras. Transcriptions, both by composers themselves, in the case of Prokofiev and Shatin, and by Liszt, in music of Schumann and Wagner, embody timeless tales, while musical accounts of St. Cecilia, of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and poetry of Emily Dickinson are here transformed into music.

Composer Judith Shatin has an uncanny ability to draw a line between the past, the present, and the future. This, along with Martin’s preternatural ability to discover and emphasize the connective tissue between them all, is something to behold. Shatin, who is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor in the University of Virginia’s McIntire Department of Music, is known for her dramatic flair and inventive approach to timbral color. These are everywhere in evidence in her two compositions here.

Gayle Martin, piano

Recorded September 10-11, 2015 & December 5, 2015 at Octaven Audio in Yonkers NY
Engineered, Digital Editing and Producer Marlan Barry

Gayle Martin
has had a distinguished career as a concert artist, achieving international prominence as the sole American Laureate of the sixth International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow, and only the third American woman ever to reach the finals. A native of Texas, she was one of the very last students of the famous pedagogue, Madame Rosina Lhevinne at the Juilliard School, where she was awarded the very prestigious Josef Lhevinne Prize. She also studied with the well-known Seymour Bernstein, who is the subject of a recent documentary featured in the New York, Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals this Fall. Her M.A degree was earned at New York University, where she was on the faculty for five years.

Her most recent highlight was a performance of the Beethoven “Emperor” Concerto with the California Philharmonic at the Ambassador Theater in Pasadena. Other performances include appearances with the Houston Symphony (since age 12), the Moscow Radio Philharmonic, the Maracaibo Symphony, the Denver Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Amarillo, Virginia and Battle Creek Symphony Orchestras, the Central New Jersey Symphony, and the Philharmonia Virtuosi of New York. She has toured throughout South America, including an engagement in Buenos Aires at the Teatro Colón with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Argentina. In 2004, her performance with the Moravian Philharmonic of Judith Shatin’s Piano Concerto, “The Passion of St. Cecilia,” was released by Capstone Records.

Additional concerts include performances at Lincoln Center in New York, at the White House and at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and numerous other appearances throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, Mexico, England, Austria, Poland, Israel, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Mainland China.

Reviewers have written of “her intense passion and deep-seated emotional response to the music” (Washington Post), and that “this was a performance which, if recorded on 78s, could have fooled the average pianophile into thinking he or she was listening to one of the greats of the past.” (Woodstock Times).

In reviewing her Alice Tully Hall recital at Lincoln Center, the New York Times reported that she created “a truly magical atmosphere…and made this listener smile with pleasure.” Following a recent performance of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto, the critic Courtenay Cauble wrote: “Gayle Martin has it all. The depth of feeling is always there…because she makes the music her own and then communicates it, as any real artist must learn to do. Her performance was both brilliant and moving, and always beautiful.”

A theme running through some of ARCA’s late season programming features works that composers have written for the dance. Ms. Henry has chosen selections from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Ballet Suite and several works by Frederic Chopin for this occasion. Additional offering will include the “Wanderer Fantasy” and the Impromptu by Franz Schubert.

Longfellow was astute in his observation. At a post-concert reception at the Red Brick Gallery in Foxburg announcing the opening of a new exhibition featuring the Civil War paintings of Amy Lindenberger, take the hand of ARCA’s old friend Gayle Henry and see how good it does feel.

This album contains no booklet.